Comments

Glad you like it Frank. Visio has proven itself to be a compentant and popular program, why wouldn't we use it as a template? We are going much further with our integration than Visio ever went. We don't read Visio files yet because we haven't gotten to it. This is a beta release, so we haven't done everything yet.

Are you joking around? TheKompany has to be the *coolest* for developing awesome applications for KDE, then releasing it under the GPL. I don't know about the above post, but I sure appreciate all your guys hard work.

But a Visio clone is exactly what a huge number of us need, purely because the Visio name/brand has become synonymous with the type/style of document it produces, and that's what IT and Business Management relate to. They don't ask for a vector graphics diagram, they ask for a "visio diagram" !!

Just like Hoover for example, where people use the word hoover in place of Dyson and don't even realise the mistake; because the word "hoover" is synonymous with "vaccuum cleaner"!

If I can give my boss a Visio diagram, he's happy. The fact that I have produced it in Kivio and then output the drawing in Visio format is irrelevant. Ok, I know Kivio can't do this yet, but I'm just outlining a conceptual example.

There are advantages to do original work .. capitalizing on existing mind share isn't one of them.

Frank, please don't make yourself sound like a wally. Have you any idea what the enormous challenges are of working with Visio's proprietary format? It will take a not insignificant amount of work to reverse engineer the format, and a not insignificant amount of legal minefield ballet to get away with it. That fact that these guys even have plans to take them on are praise-worthy enough.

Kivio is not a finished app. Remember that. And if you really want Visio support so desperately, I'm sure the Kivio project will welcome your contribution, so start coding.

Well you've always got to wonder about someone that is anonymous. In what way might we be evil? We are writing software no one else is writing, we are providing tools to OSS that no one else is providing. We also plan to make money on some of our projects. How is that evil? Even RMS is of the opinion that free software doesn't not mean no cost. We work very closely with many people in KDE, and everyone has been happy with the arrangement as far as we know.

The wonderful thing about OSS is that you have a choice. You can use what we create, or you can choose something else that satisfies your needs.

When company after company, including Real, Microsoft, and AOL, has used the proprietary software business model in ways that harm consumers, do you blame people for being suspicious of you?

When you follow this business model of selling software as a product (for whatever future proprietary projects you have in mind/in development), the burden is on you to prove that proprietary software is worth our time. Again and again, software developers have used their exclusive control over the source code as leverage over their customers. Why will you be different? What guarantees do we have?

I am curious Neil, do you think OSS means that the source should be available or that the software should be free? If no one ever makes money, then eventually the system will start to degrade. Money has to come from somewhere. In the case of Kivio we have produced what I think is an excellent application in a very short development cycle. Each of our products has a different pricing model. The pricing model for Kivio will be announced in a Linuxplanet interview/review of Kivio later this week. I don't want to make a big production of it, but be assured that Kivio is GPL and will remain free as in beer. We are working on making it a standard piece of the KOffice package. Hopefully people will support us so that we can continue to bring quality software to everyone.

Yes, I understand very clearly that making money is important to the thekompany venture, and I also do distinguish clearly between the price of software, and the control over software.

I don't care if a piece of software is free of charge, or if it costs $1000 dollars, as long as the customer has control over his destiny.

What I find interesting is that you keep focusing on money. If you read Stallman's writings, money is not an issue to him. Freedom (i.e. the lack of outside control) is an issue to him.

Shawn, when you keep talking about how you have to make money "somehow," I have to look at your plans to make closed software releases with a critical eye. What about thekompany should make me trust closed software releases from it? What guarantee do I have that "somehow" won't include trojan code that violates my privacy, or perversion of standard protocols, or subtle incompatibilities with less-favored operating system distributions, or even annoying advertising?

That's all I Want to know. If you can make a clear argument to answer that, my criticisms of your plans to make proprietary software releases will cease. It's that simple.

Just because you release some good software GPL, it doesn't mean I'm going to just go along with proprietary groupware servers, or closed tools for RAD, or whatnot.

Neil there is nothing I can or need to say to guarantee my plans for anything that I do. Our plans evolve as the market changes and as our understanding changes.

This does *not* change the fact that whatever we have released to date under a GPL will always be available in that state for you to do whatever you want. If for some bizarre reason we changed the license, as we can, but I don't know why we would, you would still have that code out there.

I don't need to justify or make excuses about items we might do that are closed or proprietary. You are worried about your rights, what about my rights to my intellectual property that we spent large sums of money to develop? Who will protect my right if I release it totally open and instead of paying for it, people just take it. Do they have a right to do that? Should they have a right?

I agree with making the source available for people so they can continue to improve it or modify it to suite their needs, but any work they do will be trivial compared to what we did.

I focus on money because I have a business to run and salaries to pay. I get resumes from people every day wanting to work for me, I can't pay them if I don't have money.

As a company we expend a tremendous amount of time and money on projects that are for everyone, we are giving back to the community because it's the right thing to do.

Again you have the choice. You can use what we create, or you can find something else to use.

I don't see your problem Neil. The Kompany programmed something - well everybody has the right to write a program. You don't have to use it, doe you? Furthermore they give it to us under the GPL. You still don't have to use it. It could be, that they develop more cool software. If you don't liek to, don't use it. So, what is your problem? You don't have to give them your money. Besides, where do you get your money from? Don't you get paid for your work? Why mustn't this people get paid for their work?

You make no sense,
Kivio was released under the GPL, even though theKompany has the right to change it's license down the road, the source that has already been released can be taken back or restricted, damn, you can even fork it if you want!

Reading Linuxplanet's article, theKompany plans making money from Kivio by selling specialized stencils, but nothing keeps you from reverse engeneering the stencil's format and create your own stencils or a tool to do it, you have Kivio's source code, so wouldn't be that hard either.

Will kivio support creating networks of objects where you can define inputs and outputs for the various boxes. For example, having an "input box" that loads an image, and various "transformation boxes" that are given the image as input and does various transformations. Then at the end of the network one could have a "viewer" object that shows the image.

I ask because I saw that kivio was supposed to be scriptable, and there are lots of programs that does the above, but usually they are not very strong in the stencil department.

Great stuff. I just installed the beta on Mandrake 7.2 and it works very well. Kivio will be the perfect to diagram drawing and as a replacement for Visio user.
I personally support Kompany even if it is going to release its products as commercial softwares.

Yeah, whatever Mr.Troll. If you really want to make a point say something like:

"Actually, the price of a 20 GB HD is really
sosososo, heres the url of where you can buy it from that price. The above argument doesn't really make much sense."

Although I disagree, i have seen HDs priced that way, if you want to make a point, make it in a civisiled way, using arguments with REAL STATISTICS, and put your name. Otherwise, you're just another troll.

And if you're argument about me being "not in any way connected to reality" is not about the the hard drive, it's instead about the size of the packages, then you're quite right, I forgot you need the KOffice package for KParts, so it's actually around 25MB. Sorry about that.

Yeah, whatever Mr.Troll. If you really want to make a point say something like:

"Actually, the price of a 20 GB HD is really
sosososo, heres the url of where you can buy it from that price. The above argument doesn't really make much sense."

Although I disagree, i have seen HDs priced that way, if you want to make a point, make it in a civisiled way, using arguments with REAL STATISTICS, and put your name. Otherwise, you're just another troll.

And if you're argument about me being "not in any way connected to reality" is not about the the hard drive, it's instead about the size of the packages, then you're quite right, I forgot you need the KOffice package for KParts, so it's actually around 25MB. Sorry about that.

Yeah, whatever Mr.Troll. If you really want to make a point say something like:

"Actually, the price of a 20 GB HD is really
sosososo, heres the url of where you can buy it from that price. The above argument doesn't really make much sense."

Although I disagree, i have seen HDs priced that way, if you want to make a point, make it in a civisiled way, using arguments with REAL STATISTICS, and put your name. Otherwise, you're just another troll.

And if you're argument about me being "not in any way connected to reality" is not about the the hard drive, it's instead about the size of the packages, then you're quite right, I forgot you need the KOffice package for KParts, so it's actually around 25MB. Sorry about that.

Kivio looks great. I downloaded the RPM's and played with it over the weekend and was very impressed. Thank you for donating this piece of software to our community. When you have a final version, I will probably buy it from your company to return the favor.

I do have a question though. I tried to compile the source for Kivio but got completely lost. I'm used to ./configure..make..make install but I couldn't compile Kivio in this manner. It looks like you built the system with KDE Studio, which I haven't had a chance to try yet. Is that the only way to compile the product or am I missing something silly?

Here's the best part: you won't have to buy it! It's officialy GPL now, meaning that you can get source code (and therefore the program itself) for free! Thanks for this awesome donation to the Open Source community, theKompany!!!

Shawn Gordon, this software impresses me! The UI looks finished, it hasn't crashed on me once in an hour, and starts up very quickly. Personally, I've never doubted your fine intentions for the KDE project, and those trolls above don't have a fscking clue what they're talking about! Thank you very much!

Thanks for your kind words and support, and if you do run into trouble, make sure to email us at support@thekompany.com, or even if you have suggestions. We have a list of things we are working through already, maybe we should post them so people know and don't replicate work.

We are working on the About box, there are some things we need to resolve when we put it in there. For simple clarification, Kivio is a derivitive work of Queesio by Dave Marotti. We worked closely with Dave to create Kivio and the primary architect from our group was Max Judin, the author of KDE Studio. Both guys have done a tremendous job.

Funny you should ask, we were just having a conversation about this yesterday. Max did a fantastic job on the color chooser widget, and a lot of people seem to like it. We just need to coordinate it and make sure that the stuff we release is production quality so people don't suffer :). You should see the stuff showing up in the very near future.

I'm have one problem, in my job the people use VISIO to draw the diagram and transform in pdf to publish in the web, but we want to publish direct the program and when i see in the browser( NOT IE) i can see the shape's properties.